Green Yourself!

Hypo-Christianity

22 September 2008

1
: a servile dependent, follower, or underling
2
: one highly favored :idol3
: a subordinate or petty official

It's sickening. This country is clearly doped up on Thorazine. I received this email today that puts things in perspective. I have not checked the accuracy of the facts, but many of them are well known. If anyone reading this can rebut any part of the following, I promise to print the corrections.

"I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 2 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now." (source unavailable)

This campaign is over the top. Ever since 9/11 the GOP has been getting away with murder - literally and figuratively.

26 June 2008

This is a few days late, I know, but I can't let it go, because George was my absolute favorite.

Like many my age, I used to sit around as a teenager listening to his LPs and getting high with my friends. We laughed and laughed and laughed and have not stopped laughing at (with) him for the quarter century that followed.

The thing that defined his comic genius (and all perfect comedy) was his ability to point out the obvious, call us all out on our hypocrisies and make us laugh at ourselves. There is no better teaching method than humor and I laughed myself all the way to enlightenment via his quirky wisdom.

He'll be sorely missed.RIP George.XXKHT

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." ~GC

editor's note: I just realized all these b'days I've been jacking from here: MARCH FAMOUS B'DAYS are four years back dated (except for today's and henceforth) - so add four years to the last month's b'days cuz I'm not going to go back and fix em... D'oh!

18 February 2008

For some time now I've been meaning to share my appreciation for the amazing film Zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist is a three part documentary addressing the serious modern and historical problem of social manipulation through religious and political propaganda using fear as the primary tool.

Part I (below) focuses on the history of western religion. I've seen this film a dozen times so far, and shared it with others ten of those times, and it never fails to amaze me or the people I've shared it with.

This segment breaks down the often propagandized history of Christianity into scenarios so obvious that it leaves the viewer feeling a bit foolish for ever entertaining these myths in the first place - admit it, we've all at least on some level considered the possibilities of heaven/hell and the theoretical consequences of rejecting the dogma whether or not we've ever embraced it.

For the record, I fell for fundamentalism at one time. At my most vulnerable, while searching for meaning, I entertained Christianity fully; but in the end (thankfully) good sense and logic saved me from a lifetime of trying to force my brain off so that everything could be God's responsibility instead of my own; because ultimately, that is all religion really is - giving one's will over to a "higher power" so that we can relieve ourselves of our drive to make sense of the senseless while disavowing ourselves of personal responsibility for our actions or inactions.

Isn't that the sickest part of Christianity? The static list of do's and don'ts that still allow Christians to rape and/or pillage because while these things are against god's rules and presumably will, he will forgive you anything through the violence of sacrifice. It's a prescription for disaster and the clergy use it to their full advantage.

It's a command to ignore one's conscience and follow blindly. It is by design a hierarchy of mass manipulation to sate the greed of a few at the toil and expense of the poorest and neediest among us.

That's not to say that good works have never come from it - lest we forget that many take the route of religion to fulfill their natural inclinations to love their "brethren" and be good stewards of the beautiful earth we share. After all, science has proven that we are in fact one big human family, no further related than by a few levels of cousins. But what I'm saying is that we don't need to pretend to follow a deity's orders in order to care about each other and do what natural law innately tells us is right or wrong. Every day, in every way, we all choose between greed and compassion and we don't need a God to help us decide between them.

I'm not an atheist. I couldn't be without all of the answers and in this life, the one thing I know, is that I will never know. How could this miniscule limited person that is me, decide for once and for all that there is no reality beyond my own?

But I can decide that based on the historical evidence and obvious lack of logic as well as empathy that is required to practice Christianity, that it is absolute bunk. As such I feel it my responsibility to try to help as many people free themselves from it's tyranny as I can in this small lifetime of mine; because it is tragic subterfuge, and can only do more harm than good, no matter what emotional comforts the individual thinks they can glean from it.

If you've read this far, I hope you will take the time to watch the video and decide for yourself. It might just change your life.